Tag: roi

Retailers derive significant value from upselling and cross-selling customers but mobile and social game companies are yet to master this opportunity. The cost of acquiring customers, particularly paying customers, is high so it is vital to get as much value as possible from these customers. It is also more cost effective, as Marketing Metrics stated it is 50 percent easier to sell to existing customers than new ones.

First, it is important to understand the difference between upselling and cross selling. Upselling is getting a customer to purchase more of an item they are already buying while cross selling is convincing them to purchase complimentary items.

Starbucks presents examples of both upselling and cross selling. If you are about to buy a Grande Latte and the cashier suggests a Venti Latte, they are upselling. If they then ask you if you want a Cake Pop with your Latte, they are cross selling.

In the social gaming space, both are possible. If a player is about to buy 5,000 chips for $10, you can upsell by offering them another 1,000 chips for $1. You can cross sell by also suggesting they pay to unlock five exclusive slot machines to use their new chips in for another $10. You can also cross sell them into another game.

While browsing

When a customer is playing your game or wandering in a casino it is a perfect time to cross sell them with potential purchases. Their game or browsing activity is an opportunity to show them how they can have a better experience by monetizing. At this critical stage in their journey, they may not be aware of your other offerings, or plan to make a purchase. As Hurley writes, “while customers browse your digital properties, product or service bundles should be presented as super helpful add-ons.”

In social casino, one of the most impactful developments was integrating progressive jackpots with an upsell mechanic. Players can enjoy a slot (browse) and then be presented with an offer to bet higher and have a chance to win a huge progressive jackpot. Only with the higher bet, which requires monetization, can players enjoy the progressive jackpot. In real money casino, this is an even clearer upsell, as players need to play at a higher stake (spend more) to have the chance to win more.

One critical element to keep in mind when players are browsing/playing, is that the offer needs to be relevant. If somebody is playing slots, a promotion to sports bet is unlikely to be successful. Instead, try to get them to spend more on the slots and give them a sports betting offer during the purchase (see below).

On paywall

The second great opportunity to upsell and cross sell a player is when they are in the process of purchasing. First, you can upsell by offering them an add-on. This add-on can be additional chips or currency at a discounted price or a different virtual item in the game (the upsell).

This is also a great opportunity to cross sell. When someone is making a purchase, you can give them something of value in another one of your products (the cross sell). This can be free chips or tournament tickets in the other product, access to a special VIP area, sneak peak or exclusive content (which they would not want to lose).

For the purchase event upsell/cross-sell to be most effective, you should imbue a sense of urgency and scarcity. If it is an offer to purchase more, make it a limited time offer only available to X players. With cross sell, it is even more powerful. If you have a poker game and give someone a key that expires in 24 hours for an exclusive slot in your casino product, that is a powerful incentive for them to try your other game.

To optimize the efficiency of these purchase events activities, Hurley recommends several key elements:

Keep it simple. Tell customers exactly what they will get via upsells and cross-sells, concisely and considerately.

Keep it welcoming. You don’t want your customer to feel they are buying a used car. Hurley recommends “Customers also bought…” instead of “Add these to your cart, now!”

Keep it relevant. The better the alignment, the greater your conversion rate and order value.

After purchase

Once you have gotten a player to monetize, it is the optimal time to turn them into a repeat customer. According to Hurley, post-purchase upsell and cross sell has the highest conversion rate of any type of upsell. Look at the purchase as the beginning of a never ending funnel, the beginning of the Paying Customer Journey.

Once a customer has made a purchase, you can both present upsell and cross sell offers. Allow them to make an additional purchase for a limited time or give them loyalty points, where they earn even more by making another purchase. It is also a great time to present your other products, by buying chips in our slots product, why don’t you try our video poker experience.

There are four primary ways to present the post purchase cross or upsell opportunity:

Once someone has made a purchase, set up a drip email marketing campaign tailored to that player. Make follow on offers based on how they used their initial purchase and the size of the purchase.

Customer support (across all channels) is another chance to upsell and cross-sell your customers, but ensure your CS reps have access to the purchase information and do not turn into cheap salespeople (their primary objective is to keep your customers happy).

Receipts. Include an offer when you send a receipt to a player for a purchase (even if made through the app store use it as an opportunity to send a receipt). Receipts have a much higher open rate than other emails (71 percent versus about 17 percent) and are more likely to be retained by your customer. Include in the receipt a discount off the customer’s next purchase.

Keep upsell and cross sell top of mind

Given the high ROI of upsell and cross sell promotions, you need to integrate it into all elements of product development and CRM. Think of the various customer touchpoints and how you can integrate upsell and cross sell.

Key takeaways

It is 50 percent easier to sell to existing customers than new ones, so you should focus efforts on increasing the size of purchases by your current customers (upsell) and getting them to purchase more of your products (cross-sell).

There are three elements of the customer journey where you can cross-sell and upsell, when they are playing your game (browsing), during the purchase and after the purchase.

Post purchase is the most effective time to upsell and cross-sell, you can offer your customers a discount on their next purchase or an incentive to try one of your other games. This can be done via email, push notifications, your CS team or by sending a purchase receipt that incorporates an offer.

While I consider myself one of the most data-driven people in the gaming industry, I understand that quantitative data alone is not the optimal input for decision making. Combining analytics with qualitative data can often improve your decisions. You can think of it as a basic mathematic equation, if X is data and Y is qualitative information (ie. personal past experience), by definition X+Y will be equal or greater than X alone. An article by Bain & Co., one of the world’s leading consultancies, The Math, The Magic and the Customer shows how great marketers go beyond the data.

As the article points out, marketing departments now spend more on technology than IT departments. We have great tools not only to measure every marketing campaign, but each creative in the campaign, each channel we use and how each creative interacts with each customer in each channel. Often, however, we rely on this information without looking holistically at the customer or realizing that customers will not always behave consistently (or rationally). People make decisions emotionally as well as logically and as the article says, “great marketers have always known this, which is why they work hard to build an emotional bond with the customers they are targeting. They tell compelling stories about their brands through memorable messages and indelible images. At its best, this kind of marketing pops and dazzles, like magic. Marketing that ignores the magic and relies on math and science alone will be marketing that doesn’t work.”

Data and forging emotional connections are not mutually exclusive. Great marketers do not rely on just one. They use the myriad of data to create a holistic view of the customer and customer journey. The marketing is customer-centric rather than tool centric, all of the data and analysis comes down to what will be most effective in the future with the customer (not what the cohort did in the past). And as Bain writes, “contrary to the inclination of many marketers, moreover, they do not put measurement of ROI at the top of their agenda. When they can’t measure the ROI of an innovative effort, they are willing to let instinct guide their efforts—at least for a while.”

There are three keys to using data and the holistic view of the customer effectively. By combining a single view of the customer, understanding and tapping into their emotions and testing relentlessly you can replicate what is working for the most successful companies.

Paint a holistic picture of the customer

Most companies, not only online ones, have gigabytes of data about their customers. Data includes preferences, locations, device types, when and where they interact, purchase decision process, where they are browsing, what else they are doing online, etc. You can even see where your customers are and what they are doing at an exact time; you can interact on a real time basis. The information also comes from multiple sources and is stored in different locations.

The key to successful marketing is putting this data together for a single, real time, view of the customer. To achieve this goal companies must come together and the marketing team, IT team, analytics team — even finance — must all work together to share data and build systems to create a plan to build this complete view. Then the company needs to create a single customer record, where all of the information is held. While it sounds easy, this process can take years but in the interim data should be streaming into marketing so it can start looking at the customer holistically.

Encourage emotions

People are not algorithms or cells on a spreadsheet, not only is it immoral to treat them that way it is not good marketing. By understanding your customers’ journey, you can then tailor the experience to elicit the appropriate emotions at the right time. If it is a gambling game (either real money or virtual chips), provide excitement after a big win or help calm them down after a bad beat. By understanding your customers and potential customers emotions and encouraging the right one at the right time, you can make them more likely to choose and enjoy your product.

Stay nimble and be bold

You need to test many different approaches, as eliciting emotion is not easy. The important part of testing is learning from the results. Reinforce what is working and discard what is not, even if you were the advocate of the sub-optimal variant. Then think of new methods and promotions that will build on what you have learned and create even better results.

Moving forward you are not CFO

With the reliance on metrics and ROI in marketing, the marketing department is quietly becoming a mirror of finance. While metrics and ROI are critical to long-term success, so is generating emotions from your customers and potential customers. To become a truly great marketer, you need to understand how to connect to your customer as well as reading your daily dashboard.

Key takeaways

While data and ROI is critical to successful marketing, adding qualitative measures makes your marketing more effective as it is effectively additional data.

A key to successful marketing is generating the right emotion at the right time from your customer or potential customer, as emotions drive people, not data.

Continue testing different approaches and techniques, discarding what does not work and building off of what does work.

Get my book on LTV

Understanding the Predictable delves into the world of Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), a metric that shows how much each customer is worth to your business. By understanding this metric, you can predict how changes to your product will impact the value of each customer. You will also learn how to apply this simple yet powerful method of predictive analytics to optimize your marketing and user acquisition.

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Lloyd Melnick

This is Lloyd Melnick’s personal blog. I am EVP Casino at VGW, where I lead the Chumba Casino team. I am a serial builder of businesses (senior leadership on three exits worth over $700 million), successful in big (Disney, Stars Group, Zynga) and small companies (Merscom, Spooky Cool Labs) with over 20 years experience in the gaming and casino space.